Posts Tagged ‘Budget’

There it is: Another inflammatory headline from an Internet blogger. You’ve see hundreds, or even thousands of those. All of them scream for your attention, and yet most of them offer only meaningless diatribes, or scant details of vague conspiracies about the impending destruction of your nation, or the world. It’s a normal tactic that the news business has employed throughout history, so not too many people even raise an eyebrow until they see the mushroom clouds any longer. If that’s your view, and who could blame you, you’ll probably shrug-off this one too. Before you click through, however, on your way to the next blaring headline, I’d like you to know the facts behind my screeching claim: Barack Obama is threatening to effectively dissolve your US Constitution, and nobody in Washington DC seems inclined to do the first thing about it. The moment for the American people to engage is now, if they value their country. The President is preparing to overthrow the Constitution, and with it, the United States of America.

If you listened to Mark Levin on Tuesday evening, you might get some idea of the threat now posed against this republic. Barack Obama is sending out his hoodlums in government and media to talk about a “default.” Let me explain to readers the absolute facts about “default.” The United States government takes in approximately $200 billion in revenues every month. It must make monthly payments on its debts, including principal and interest, in the amount of roughly $20 billion. Therefore, it is mathematically impossible for the US government to default at its current level of debt and income because its actual income exceeds its factual, legally-binding obligations. After the debt obligations are satisfied, the remainder, roughly $190 billion, can be taken and applied to government spending priorities. Naturally, those priorities include funding the military, veterans, and Social Security.

The only way a default can happen under our current situation is that if the President illegally and unconstitutionally directs the Secretary of the Treasury to withhold payments of debt obligations. If the President does this, he will be violating the law that binds him, he will be exceeding his constitutional authority, and he will be committing flagrantly an act of economic sabotage and terrorism against the American people. There is no recourse but for the American people in such a case to oust the President, at first by legal means, and to oust likewise all of those who give him legal shelter.

As it stands, the Republicans in Congress are shaking in their boots. It is time to face down the dictator, and most of them haven’t the guts. That’s where your part in this battle for the constitution comes into play. They must hold. They must not fold. They must bring articles of impeachment, or the would-be tyrant must relent. These are the only viable answers to this dilemma. Everything else will result in the death of the Republic, either in revolutionary strife or in permanent despotism.

For those of you who clicked into this blog thinking you would read another ludicrous claim, let me assure you that there is nothing remarkable here that the globe has not seen over human history, many hundreds or even thousands of times: We have devolved into a culture and a society that no longer respects the rule of law, and no longer demands its leaders comply with it. We have arrived at this point because when we should have spoken up in the name of law and in the name of justice, we instead deferred the fight for some future date. That day is now. Any further deferment will merely accelerate the collapse. We must not surrender, we must not give in, and we must make the Republicans fight while they are able, by every means at their disposal.

If they fail, or falter, and if Obama will not blink, there will be only us. At present, Obama hides behind the trappings of his office and a semi-legitimate claim to authority. If he exceeds his authority, all bets are off. His claim to authority is at such a point completely bogus. We must demand his removal. We must demand the House draft articles of impeachment for his extra-constitutional actions. We must demand the Senate try him for his treason.

That’s it. That’s all there is to this story. Our republic’s constitution stands on the verge of a coup d’etat, with a President intent upon destroying it, with only the weak-kneed Republicans and us to defend it. Tonight, as Senators and Representatives dance to Obama’s tune, we must change the music. We have no choice any longer, because if we lose the constitution, we will have lost everything indespensable on this Earth that was made by men.

Unsure as I am as to how much longer I will be able to maintain this blog, it is my intention to cover a few topics of significant gravity, whatever else may come next. There are certain things a man must be willing to discuss, whatever the cost, because the cost of silence is infinitely higher. What I will address hereunder is one such subject, dire though its context may be, simply because you should be made aware of it. As you already perceive at an almost instinctual level, we are losing the United States. As many of us have feared for at least the last five years, this will be due neither to an outside attack, nor even to the creeping, rotting decay now consuming our culture. Instead, we may now lose the country to the direct predations of an attack from within, launched by those entrusted with defending it. This attack is likely to come in the form of the final, functional abolition of our constitution. The precedents will have been set, and the last of the remaining constitutional checks and balances will have been removed by fiat. Barack Obama intends to seize vast unconstitutional powers, and we shall see the rise of a dictator in the full blossom of his tyrannical authority.

The final assault on the fabric of our constitution will be launched by constitutional law professors working in concert with an aggressive executive who will with crisis-born pretense impose his dicta upon this nation. The script is already written. The pieces are nearly in place. “Go-time” is drawing near, because this will be his last great opportunity to finally, fundamentally transform this nation into a cesspool of totalitarianism. Conservatives will call for his impeachment, to no avail, as the US Senate is controlled by his philosophical cohorts. There will be no undoing this peaceably, whatever some, even those near and dear to us may claim. I believe the probability is unusually high that we will now witness the final days of the Republic you had known, and this historic human tragedy will be visited upon the people of the United States by Barack Hussein Obama, a criminal now ensconced in the office of the United States Commander-in-Chief, who has previously hinted at his dictatorial inclinations.

Mark Levin has discussed this, even on Thursday, explaining how Barack Obama will make a claim of constitutional authority for which there is no reasonable or valid claim anywhere in its text. Levin still clings to a thread of hope that somehow, we will at some future date reverse this disastrous, wretched attack on our Republic by restoring it through constitutional process without reference to Washington DC. If he will have been correct, at some future date, we would find ourselves able to reverse this attack by virtue of constitutional amendments instigated by the states, but such will not be plausible, or even possible, if Barack Obama makes this lethal claim of authority. For years, leftists have been making the claim that there lies within the fourteenth amendment the authority for a President to ignore the debt ceiling in satisfying the debts of the United States. While such claims have no rational basis, the amendment itself stating nothing of the sort, and with a Congress composed of sufficient statesmen of both parties in both houses who would oppose it, there might be a chance. Sadly, we no longer have such a Congress. The President need not worry about opposition even from the House, where Republican leaders continue to plot the undermining of the country in concert with Barack Obama.

Here’s the segment of Levin’s show in which he discusses the threat posed by Obama’s anti-constitutional plot:

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While many of us may have been surprised pleasantly to see Boehner and Cantor standing somewhat more firmly than in recent budget impasses, they are merely playing their assigned roles now. If Levin’s warning is correct, they will scarcely be relevant to what is about to happen to our Republic. Barack Obama has been talking-down the stock market, and he’s brought the captains of finance into his offices for discussions. Wall Street wants the borrowing and printing to continue unabated. They’re making out like bandits, robbing us blind by paying paltry sums of interest on money being dumped by the wagon-load into the markets. They want the gravy-train to continue, and the President is willing to let them for now. You see, like all such men of finance, they have accepted a well-worn lie about the power of capital and the efficacy of money. They believe money is the source of all power, and that as the cliche goes, it “makes the world go ’round.” They have certainly adopted happily the notion of the bastardized form of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules.” The problem is that their thesis is wrong, and in the end, they’re going to learn it. Money is not a cause, but merely an effect. You see, Barack Obama studied under a different philosophy, one that references directly the most ruthless of his philosophical antecedents, Mao Zedong, who in brevity offered:

“Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The Wall Street types don’t understand this. Obama understands this too well, having been mentored by radicals Ayers and Davis, who taught him the value of force, and who understood that only violence and its threat actually enforce political power. The men of high finance are those who have learned that money can buy anything, but their lessons were corrupt. They believe politicians are always open to bribes, and why wouldn’t they? What they do not understand is that there exists a class of true believers, some good but many evil, who are not subject to this sort of temptation because of the strength of their beliefs. I now believe Barack Obama may well be one such man, because his vision for America trumps any number of dollars you might offer him. Bother now to ask yourselves what sort of historical monsters could not have been tempted from their pursuit of naked power for any amount of wealth, knowing that on their path, they will have access to all the wealth they could ever need. Attempt to understand by asking of yourself: “How does an unarmed man in the proverbial dark alley bribe a pistol-waving mugger to take only some of his cash?” This is the question these captains of finance and wizards of stock markets have blinded themselves from seeing. They still think there’s something to negotiate. Suffice it to say that by the time Obama is done with them, they will have asked themselves that question, even if much too late to matter.

Ask the Swiss bankers who folded like cheap napkins when Obama’s IRS went demanding account information on Americans. How many potential opponents were then neutered forevermore? What do you think that was about, anyway? What do you think Dodd-Frank is about? Those who couldn’t wait to heap more regulations on the financial industry will soon learn the full impact of that law. So will the average American when he learns his deposits are subject to be frozen or seized by whim of the chief executive and the Secretary of the Treasury acting at his behest.

All Obama now needs is an excuse, and the Republicans in Congress will give it to him, and he will be justified by all the lunatics who call themselves “constitutional scholars” he has brought along with him. These will be people who do not need the arm-twisting that was used on John Roberts in order to see things the President’s way on Obama-care. These are other true-believers. They see their arguments as being full of the same holes you and I see, but that doesn’t matter so much as the fact that they will make them, insistently, irrespective of all facts, all standards of language, and all legal precedents. Their only job is to buy Obama the time he will need for the controversy over his intended act(s) to die down, and for Mr. and Mrs. America to return to their football, their NASCAR, their baseball games, their “reality TV,” and the myriad other distractions that will seem more pressing and much less boring than an argument over the President’s constitutional authority or evident lack thereof. In that moment, the Republic’s death will be imminent.

If the President can concoct any old excuse to ignore his constitutional limitations, no matter how perfectly absurd or patently unreasonable the justification, the constitution will be dead. Absent the constitution, the Republic will no longer exist, and what you had known as the United States of America might still linger a while, even years, but its fundamental core, and its beating heart will have been stilled even if there is still a dimming signal for a while emitted by its expiring brain. What will he do? Clearly, all the evidence exists that he intends at some point to initiate a maneuver by which he will claim an extraordinary authority in the face of a real or concocted emergency from which he will promise to save us all, while driving the final nails in the casket of the Republic. Worst of all, he is now and has been conspiring to create that crisis. The time has now arrived for this nestling to take wing.

He has been talking a good deal about how Congress must pay the debts it has previously incurred, but this too is tortured language because Congress hasn’t incurred a debt until it’s borrowed the money. What he intends is that by the “full faith and credit” clause of the fourteenth amendment, he will simply issue an executive order seizing control of the treasury. There is some precedent for this, having been done in lesser measure by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, claiming the aegis of a vast emergency “almost as great as that of war,” and using the “Trading With the Enemy Act of 1917” as subsequently amended. Obama will make the same tyrannical claim, but he is much more self-assured than even Franklin D. Roosevelt, and he intends to carry it to its logical conclusion this time. He will ignore the legal debt ceiling, claiming the fourteenth amendment compels him to act. Close attention to the amendment reveals that only Congress is mentioned in that amendment, and there is no mention of additional executive authority. This is the moment of the trick. This is where he will step across all constitutional boundaries and forevermore become a dictator, and since he will be largely unopposed, who will object? Harry Reid? John Boehner?

What the last week has taught the President is that he is running out of time. The mood of the country is such that he now rightly expects that on our present course, he will not re-take the House in 2014, and he will be lucky to hold the Senate. If he loses the Senate, his chances to take such actions will have elapsed, because Congress and the Republicans would be in a position to at least theoretically impeach and remove him from office if he threatened the Republic. His time is dwindling, and his opportunities to take these steps are expiring as well. Now may be his last, best hope to finally and irreversibly transform the United States to its fundamental core by wrecking the constitution that had been its beating heart, however bruised and damaged, for these last two-hundred years. He and those who have helped him obtain office and maintain it are too close, having come too far to let it all slip away now. Their goal is within reach. All they need now is to grab it.

“As to the proposition that the 14th Amendment provides some authority for the President to circumvent Congress, this is a preposterous claim. The relevant sections of the Fourteenth Amendment states:”

“Section 4. The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”

“Section 5. The Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article”

“Notice that section 4 was intended to deal specifically with war debt accrued by the Union in fighting against the Confederacy during the civil war. The leftists who advocate on behalf of section 4 as a proscription against a debt ceiling are lunatics. It not only requires the setting aside of the context of the amendment, but also ignoring the subsequent section, that specifically empowers Congress to enact legislation pursuant to this amendment.”

We need not wonder any longer as to whether this amendment provides an actual constitutional basis for the actions Obama now contemplates. Flatly, it does not, and only the sort of tortured mind that labors in the basement of the Brookings Institute in devoted service to all things statist could imagine otherwise.

I relate this information not to frighten readers, but in order to arm them with the facts. The media will launch endless arguments if Obama should attempt this, and they will, along with academia, conspire to provide him the needed delay. Mark Levin still expresses the opinion that his prescription, using Article V of the US Constitution to amend it without the cooperation of Congress, and one must certainly give him all due credit for bringing that strategy to life, and we must try it, but I fear that Dr. Levin is grasping at straws in light of this development. What evidence exist to suggest that this or any Congress would act to obey Article V of the US Constitution. (By some counts, Congress has already received sufficient petitions from states to recognize a convention of the states.) If Obama attempts this, and Congress and the courts permit him to get away with it, the constitution will be dead. At that point, Article V is most probably moot, along with the rest of our founding document, and the supreme law of the land will have shifted indefinitely (and probably permanently) from that noble piece of aged parchment to the whim and will of Barack Hussein Obama. Game over.

You may wonder how he will justify all of this, but you need only let your imagination expand to the limits of what this malignant narcissist sees as his mandate and his authority. He is conspiring even now to collapse the US economy, which is why he now speaks specifically of “economic collapse.” This is why he’s going out of his way to scare the fire out of Wall Street. He and his friend Ben Bernanke have built the biggest bubble in the history of man, and he intends to burst it. Even before Labor Day this year, the price of gasoline had begun to fall. It’s still falling, and in the main, this is because general demand is low as the economy remains barely above water. To the degree the economy remains afloat at all, it is riding on an over-inflated life-preserver made up of borrowed money, leveraged assets, and consumer credit stretched to the breaking-point. College student loans now represent trillions of dollars of debt, since the government took over the administration of Federally-Guaranteed student loans. How hard do you really think Obama will need to work in order to explode the entire US economy by the 17th of October, when we reach the legal debt ceiling(which we’ve already actually surpassed, illegally?) That good old debt clock to which only a few Americans pay even scant attention has been frozen in place for more than four months. Do you really believe they haven’t exceeded it?

Obama was never going to negotiate with the Republicans. If they had passed a “clean” continuing resolution, he’d have concocted some reason to reject it with Harry Reid’s help in the Senate. Of course, at this late date, the Republicans would be foolish to do anything but stand fast, or risk losing such credibility as circumstances have afforded them. At this point, all they can do is press for maximum advantage, while trying to arouse popular sentiment against the President so long as they are able. Once before in our history, the financiers conspired with a president to set us on a similar course in justification of all he would thereafter do, but now we have a president who has set them up, and he’ll be using them for his purposes in a manner that the likes of Chairman Mao would approve.

By undertaking this approach, Barack Obama is signaling that he is ready to go for it all. In this moment of national turmoil, we will emerge either as a dictatorship with a smiley-face concealing big government’s scowl like a putrid death-mask, or we will find we had somehow prevailed and the President will become the longest serving lame duck in our nation’s history. This will be for all the marbles. It is at this point that we must reconsider that great intellectual benefactor of the Republic who urges us to follow the path laid down in Article V to reforge our Republic. Dr. Levin educates as much as any in the public eye, and his breadth and depth of knowledge on the subject of constitutional law knows few bounds. Still, in light of Obama’s presumed aggressive strategy against the Republic, one wonders if an Article V undertaking would gain any traction so long as we suffer under an Executive that willingly denies, ignores, and tramples the constitution. What good would it be if the United States government would refuse to recognize amendments instigated by a convention of the states and subsequently ratified by them?

At long-winded last comes the danger: If Obama undertakes this strategy as some now urge, and others now dread, our President will be in open insurrection against the Republic. He will be acting in clear opposition to the plain language of the supreme law of the land. At stake will be the question: “What is the supreme law of the land? The constitution, or the contrived edicts of Obama?” If the latter is permitted to stand, the United States of America will have perished. I have no hope that a popular majority of Americans now possess and will maintain sufficient outrage to compel a presidential retrenchment, else Obama-care would never have become law, much less seen its first days of implementation. This begs the question I would not now ask you to answer aloud: “What are you prepared to do?” Civil disobedience? What? Don’t answer this in words, but instead ponder the question, and decide for yourselves now what your answer will be when it comes to the real asking.

If Barack Obama is permitted to abscond with our constitution and its checks on his power, we might just as well bulldoze that memorial our aged heroes have visited, for its very meaning – their meaning – will have been lost along with the proposition that ours is a nation of laws but not men. This is what Barack Obama seeks most to overturn, and with it, to bear forth that most fundamental transformation with which he’s been threatening a nation and her people. At present, the best the American people can hope is to dissuade him from that course by open chastisement and vocal disapproval. The time may be drawing near when we will be compelled by events to answer that most dangerous question, and with its answer, to decide in finality whether we will remain a free people or submit to a brutal despotism of historic proportions. The choice remains yours.

The truth of the matter is actually rather simple: Obama-care could be de-funded any time John Boehner decided to find his…voice…and do something concrete that is entirely within his power. The House, led by Speaker Boehner, could initiate the process of sending individual appropriation bills to the Senate, one after the next, for all the essential programs and budget items that would fall under the ordinary budgetary process. Send a defense spending bill. Send a Social Security spending bill, and up the ante by giving a 4% raise in the cost of living adjustment, one time, “to account for the effects of inflation not considered in the CPI”(Consumer Price Index.) Do the same with other big spending programs, but simply withhold one on Obamacare. Dare Harry Reid to hold up the bills, or the President to veto them should they pass the Senate. Go on television and explain why all spending measures must begin in the House, and the House has passed each and every one of these individual things, and throw down the list on the table. Tell seniors: Harry Reid is holding up your Social Security check. Tell soldiers that the President, their commander-in-chief, is preventing them from being paid. Just tell the truth: Because the President and his party are more interested in buying votes than in funding the essential functions of government, the President is willing to see Grandma eating dog-food and soldiers in the field being denied beans and bullets.

I predict that with his increasingly tenuous grasp on the support of the American people, Obama would cave. Tie each bill to the debt ceiling. Make it impossible for government to spend more than its receipts. This can all be accomplished if the House of Representatives merely exercises its prevailing constitutional authority over the purse. You might want to know that Obama is probably a good deal more nervous about this than you might guess. This is because government has been illegally borrowing money in excess of the current debt ceiling since early summer. To me, this is an unconscionable circumstance, and part of the reason Boehner is going along is because the President has succeeded in buying his silence through Boehner’s complicity. The US government is already in a sort of insurrection against its own laws. Why do you suppose the debt clock has remained frozen these months, just shy of the legal borrowing limit? Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve is still lending money into existence to somebody. Any rational person can guess the real answer here, and if there isn’t a continuing resolution and a corresponding increase in the debt ceiling soon, Obama and all those assisting him will be in deep…water.

There is a conspiracy of silence in Washington DC, and the American people are its first and foremost victim. The truth is that at the current rate of government borrowing, no program is sustainable. It’s now so bad that they’re suspending investments and re-investments of Federal Employee retirement funds. That’s how bad it really is, and it’s the reason that John Boehner isn’t saying a word. It’s the reason nobody really wants to push on de-funding Obama-care, and it’s the reason Washington DC is hoping they’ll pass a continuing resolution to fund the government and this will all just quietly go away… for now.

Ladies and gentlemen, you should know that there is no chance whatever that we will succeed in slowing this runaway government unless we lean very heavily on our elected representatives. There’s no chance that as long as stooges like John Cornyn(R-TX) are willing to betray us that we can expect any change in direction. We mustn’t let these rotten liars continue. Yes, it’s as bad as that, and everybody should know it. How many conservatives are aware of what’s been going on with our debt? How many conservatives realize the implications? When and if they re-start that debt clock, you will watch it wind up more quickly than ever, at blinding speed as it lurches to catch up with all the debt the government has illegally accrued in the last several months. There is treason in Washington DC, and if you want to know why Speaker Boehner will do nothing about it, it’s because he’s in on it too.

On Friday will come the vote for cloture on the bill now pending before the Senate. Reid must not succeed, which means you must turn up the volume on all Senators beginning first thing in the morning. If you can fax them, do so. Their fax numbers are listed on the Senate’s website. Just select your state in the upper right-hand corner, and if your own senators are pretty solid, check in with some of the others, including the Minority leader’s(Mitch McConnell of Kentucky) and the Minority Whip’s(John Cornyn of Texas). Also hammer some of the red-state Senators who are up for re-election in 2014. There’s some evidence Senator Manchin of West Virginia is beginning to crack under the pressure. It’s time for maximum effort and maximum exertion from this moment until we win or lose. This will almost certainly move back to the House, in which case we’ll need to get after Boehner and the establishment phalanx there. Let us not squander the momentum and the good start Senators Ted Cruz(R-TX) and Mike Lee(R-UT) have provided. We’re in for one hell of a fight, and our country’s future is at stake. This is no time for hesitation or waffling, and we must demand our elected leaders show the character and fortitude we expect. The country is in real danger now, much worse than the DC class will tell you, and it’s time we let them know that we see what they’ve done, what they’re doing, and what we intend to do about it.

Editors note: You will notice on the Senate homepage that there is an article celebrating 100 years of direct election of the Senate, complete with a propagandist puff-piece about the passage of the 17th Amendment. Mark Levin’s book must really be getting to them, since he proposed repealing the 17th. Coincidental? You decide.

It should come as no surprise to conservatives that we’re being shafted on virtually every issue by some gang-of-eight or other assembly of Republicans who simply will not stand up to the Democrats. Normally, I don’t spend much time guessing at their motives, instead tending to examine the results of their positions. I don’t necessarily assume that our GOP establishment opponents are evil, but merely misguided. This view has been changing, because the more closely I examine their positions, the more baffled I become by any logical standard of measurement. The problem is that discovering their motive has become increasingly important to the prospect of defeating them. If we understood what it is that they’re after, we might find it somewhat easier to beat them or make them irrelevant. Sadly, I have begun to conclude that my worst fears may be true. The GOP’s establishment wing clearly runs the show, leading us to perpetual defeat. It is time to ask ourselves why by considering the issues on which they’ve abandoned conservatism.

My first question must go to folks like Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan(R-WI) on the issue of immigration reform: “Are you stupid?” I know this will seem a bit blunt to some people, but it’s a sincere question. The Senate Gang-of-Tr8ors bill offers to create between twelve and thirty million new citizens over the coming decade. We already know that the overwhelming majority of them will be Latinos of Mexican origin, and that their tendency is to vote for the Democrats by a seven-to-two ratio or worse, once they become eligible. What sort of complete and utter moron must one be to believe this could in any way redound to the benefit of the Republican party, conservatism, or even our nation’s future? Given the stance of Ryan and his cohorts, we are left to conclude that there can be only two things driving their position. Either they are among the most pathetically irrational and moronic persons, or they must know what will happen and wish to gain that result. There are no alternatives.

On the issue of the budget, the establishment Republicans insist that we must support Paul Ryan’s pathetic, tinkering attempt at reform, even though it establishes no concrete foundation of reform, instead promising to reduce the rate of growth of the deficit, but not arresting it entirely, never mind addressing the mounting debt. More, when you call members of the House or Senate to demand an explanation as to how the official National Debt count has been stuck for two months running, despite the fact that the government is taking on more debt, none of the Republican members seem all too interested in finding an explanation. Once again, we are confronted with the question: Are these people simply oblivious? Why aren’t they screaming at the top of their lungs? Here you have an administration that is exceeding the statutory debt limit by billions of dollars, and in order to disguise it, they’ve stopped the debt clock. Other than the frozen clock, they’ve continued business as usual. What good is a sequestration of funds? What good is a debt limit fight if the guys who must engage have already surrendered? Do you believe for one moment that Paul Ryan or the rest of the RINO phalanx in Washington DC is unaware? Do you believe they are so incompetent as to miss the significance of these Treasury Department actions? It is either true that they are so incompetent that we must for the good of the nation replace them, or they are willing to let Obama do what he’s doing, in which case we must be rid of them for the same reason.

I have said many times that it doesn’t really matter whether they’re simply foolish or guilty of collusion, but I’ve come to change my view on this. One can’t forgive negligence born of incompetence, but one must punish willful misdeeds more harshly as a warning to other would-be scoff-laws. It’s a matter of intent. Are the establishment Republicans in Washington DC, under the “leadership” of John Boehner(R-OH,) Mitch McConnell(R-OH,) and all the other big-government Republicans simply guilty of foolishness and incompetence, or is their behavior evidence of malice? This is the ugly question we must ask ourselves, because we may choose one or the other alternative postulate, but never both.

It’s now clear to me that the Republican party as expressed by its “leaders” in Washington DC is in open collusion with the Democrats and President Obama. There is no other way to explain their willingness to go along, knowing what the results will be. On Benghazi, they help the Democrats obfuscate, and on the IRS scandal, they gum up the works, but on legislative matters of significance, they are lending an assist to Democrats: On immigration, the budget and debt ceiling, the funding of Obama-care, and a range of somewhat less significant issues at the moment, they are not merely capitulating, but assisting the Democrats. They must be either the largest collection of stupid people in any government on the planet, or they intend the results their efforts are obtaining. It cannot be both.

A conservative must now ask with pointed clarity: Does it matter if John Boehner or some lunatic Democrat wins his seat in 2014? Does it matter in the least if Lamar Alexander or some Tennessee Democrat wins that Senate seat in 2014? The answer is yes: The prospective Democrat in either case is at least being honest about his or her intentions, in the main, at least to the degree that by running as Democrats, we voters may make an accurate guess about what sort of legislation will result. This cannot be said of the RINOs in the GOP. By running as Republicans, there has been at least the implicit idea that such candidates will oppose statism, but that simply hasn’t been the case. If ever there had been a time in American history when the willingness of voters to be true to themselves was the most critical aspect of their political activism and engagement, now must be that time. We must admit in the open what we have long suspected: The establishment wing of the GOP consists of traitors to every value and ideal we hold sacred, because they are in open collusion with those who are actively seeking the destruction of our country.

I knew the outcome before it had been announced. There would be no way in which McConnell would do anything differently from what he did in 2011. The sell-out Republicans in the Senate, excepting a few token “resistors” have voted with the Democrats to raise taxes and cut spending by a ratio of 41:1. That’s right, they’re going to cut one dollar in spending for every forty-one dollars they’ve raised in taxes. If you are an entrepreneur, just forget about making any money. If you’ve scrimped and saved in order to make your lot in life a little better, forget about it. If you’re a welfare moocher, the gravy train will continue. What this means is simple enough to understand: Your Republican party has succeeded in throwing your hard work, your efforts for prosperity, and your tireless struggles on the funeral pyre of America. These Republicans are helping Obama in his goal to kill jobs, kill wealth, and ultimately, to kill the country. Now the action returns to the House, where John Boehner will push his members to Obama’s bidding. Once again, your Grand Old Party has abandoned you, but what we must now consider is when mere political treachery traverses the boundaries of treason.

Do you want a job? Do you want a better job? Sorry. You want sanity in government spending? Balanced budgets? What budget? Budgets are so antiquated. Why should politicians be restrained by budgeting, never mind balancing them? In truth, our problem is that we have no opposition party. The concept of loyal opposition isn’t even relevant. There simply is no opposition. We are being ruled by a gang of thugs, and the only split between Republicans and Democrats is in the matter of how much they will pinch us. It’s more like rival factions of gangsters, all under the same mob bosses, with only the matter of which particular gang will rule the day remaining in question. Boehner’s arm-twisting tactics will be employed to bring the few remaining actual conservatives into line, and those who opt to oppose him will find their posts on various committees stripped from them. Even now, as The Hill reports, Boehner is busily crafting a voting majority comprised in part of his “100 loyal soldiers” (Loyal to him, but not to the constitution,) and a number of Democrats who will together shove this legislation down our throats.

Back in early December, I warned about the coming betrayals of Boehner and his band of sell-outs, and I urged that we rid the Congress of this fifth-column wart on the face of the party. Now you will have it, and your lives and the lives of your children will suffer for it. It wasn’t hard to predict, as past is prologue in Washington DC. In 2011, when Boehner walked conservatives off the plank, and when so many conservatives were scratching their heads in disbelief at the utter weakness being projected by Republican leadership in the House, I told you that these people were not working for us. At the time, I was mocked, and there were those who scoffed at my assessments, but by now, the matter should be clear. If you’re waiting for the Republican Party to rescue you, or to stand in the name of the dying republic, you will be disappointed repeatedly.

Why do they not fight? The answer is simple: Some of them are in league with the statists, adopting their principles, and some are merely cowards who wish to retain power. These people will disappear when the country collapses, to the bunkers for which you have paid, with the provisions for which you have been taxed, secured by guards you have funded, with weaponry to which you will not have access as the mobs ravage the countryside. They will be safe. Their money or wealth will be shielded. All of the “fiscal cliff” theater is simply one more diversion. The consequences of the so-called “fiscal cliff” were not so severe as pretended, but the debt cliff over which we will now almost certainly plummet shall constitute the real undoing of America.

Happy New Year America! John Boehner hates you. Nancy Pelosi dismisses you. Mitch McConnell despises you. Harry Reid spits on you. How do you know the difference between Republican and Democrat? By their beliefs? As expressed through their actions and their votes? Tell me once more: What is the difference? The Club for Growth is warning the GOP not to make this deal, but do you think Boehner and the boys will listen? No. It’s time to embrace reality, and to see for once and for all that there can be no salvation through the Republican party. The GOP is not interested in saving the country, but only themselves.

It’s as though it were a written script. All the players are carrying out their performance with practiced expertise. Given our past experiences with the leadership of both parties, one might guess that the outcome of the “fiscal cliff” crisis had been preordained. It’s beginning to nauseate me to watch this same old crowd play the same old game without any hesitation. Those of us who’ve watched these sorts of situations in the past have come to expect this sort of performance, as exemplified most recently the Debt Ceiling Deal of August 2011. All of the actors know their lines, and the end of the plot will go as planned, while they throw in some plot twist for your entertainment. As it seems we’re to be the endless butt of the insiders’ jokes, we might just as well prepare ourselves to be disappointed once again. These people aren’t serious, and the leadership on the Republican side is downright hostile to conservatives, so we shouldn’t be surprised if they’re readying themselves to put another one over on us. One can almost imagine the script, knowing the deal’s final composition has been determined already:

Boehner: “We’ll need to pass our own plan first, to blunt criticism from the knuckle-draggers.”

Obama: “I know, and I’m going to need to let Harry do most of my talking. Now John, just don’t be too rough on me in the press. Throw in some of those tears-it drives your base berserk! We’re still on for a round after the inaugural, right?”

McConnell: “I’ll let it leak to the press that I laughed at your offer.”

Reid: “Perfect! I’ll come out and say that the Republicans want to starve children and feed the rich their supper.”

Boehner: “Come on Harry, do you always have to lay it on so thick?”

Pelosi: “I just want to know if you’ll let me hold that gavel for a couple more years in 2013. We got rid of that dreadful Allen West, didn’t we?”

Biden: “Hey Barry, can I sit at the Resolute Desk while you’re in Hawaii? It’ll help me build my image for 2016.”

(Joint laughter.)

Obama: “Okay, John, let’s go with your plan. You make the tough stance to get your folks aboard, but don’t blow it this time. They need to believe you gave it your all before caving. The tears will help.”

Boehner: “Yessir, this ship is going down, and there’s no sense in getting people unnecessarily riled up. Let’s keep them busy with the deck-chairs, and when it all goes, they’ll never know what hit them. Permit me to say, Mr. President, that you’ve been masterful this year.”

Obama: “Okay, we know what we have to do. We’ll say we did all we could. Questions?”

Boehner: “How long until we pull the plug? Do we go all the way this time, ’cause I’d like to get sauced on New Year’s Eve.”

Ladies and gentlemen, that queasy feeling in the pits of your stomachs can be explained not as some sort of premonition, but perhaps a little more like Déjà vu. If it seems as though we’ve been here before, it’s only because we have, but in this case, even the names haven’t changed, because there are so damnably few innocents. For those who may have forgotten how conservatives were betrayed in 2011, during the extended Debt Ceiling debacle, let me remind you that Speaker Boehner watched the House pass “Cut, Cap & Balance” knowing it would be killed in the Senate where he had already worked out the framework of a deal with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Barack Obama. In short, while we were prodding our members to stand fast, he had already pulled the rug from beneath us, and as was disclosed during the aftermath, it was done at the urging of Mitt Romney because he didn’t want to have this fight impinging on what he assumed would be his Presidential campaign, a strategy history now proves had been a failure. At the time the deal was struck in July of 2011, I along with many other conservatives urged the Congress to stand fast, because we knew that this was an election issue any Republican nominee ought not give away.

The truth seems to be that there is never a “good time” to do the hard things in Washington DC. There’s always another election “right around the corner,” and there’s always another excuse to kick the can down the road a bit more. Rational people will have known that there’s really no time like the present to take up these issues, and if the House of representatives won’t exercise the power we’ve given it, there’s not much point in having this collection of perpetual losers on the payroll. If Boehner and his bunch aren’t up to the fight, either due to coziness with Democrats in the DC establishment, or merely as a result of cowardly political calculations, we must at long last send them home.

The so-called “fiscal cliff” and any sequestration is really a small divot compared to the disaster looming with more unbridled spending. Republicans complain that the media complex will blame them, and it most assuredly will, but it will also blame them if they go along and the economy flat-lines as the result of tax increases on the productive segments of our economy. It’s long past time to simply acknowledge that the media is going to blame Republicans, right, wrong, or indifferent, and there’s no point in wasting time with all of this whinging about the state of the media. The media is what it is. It’s awful. Life’s hard. Get helmets.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any leaders currently serving in Washington who are willing to stand up and make a case. Instead, they’re looking to cut deals, any sort of compromise at all, and they’re willing to poke you in the eye while they reach for your wallets [again.] Whether things are quite so collegial as my imagined exchange above, the fact remains that when all is said and done, more will have been said than done [again.]

This is the way things are(or aren’t) done in Washington. As you sip your coffee, watching the Sunday shows, know that somewhere behind the scenes, Boehner and the boys are cooking up another sell-out, and the script is already written. As your country, your children, and the prospects of both are being bankrupted, you don’t need to wonder whether disaster can be averted. It won’t be. Our leaders will cut a deal that will permit them to carry on the charade a little longer, purchasing only one more installment of delay for the coming disaster borne by their inaction.

Note: The site had been experiencing some difficulties with the comment system. I now believe it to be repaired. Thank you for your patience.

Early Wednesday, I brought you the story that had erupted in Washington over Republican capitulation on Presidential appointments on Tuesday evening. While Ted Cruz was winning the Republican run-off for Senate in Texas, the House Republican leadership was busy selling us out, but it didn’t end with the matter of Presidential appointments. They also came to an agreement on another temporary spending extension that will carry the budget problems until after the elections by virtue of yet another continuing resolution, as the Heritage Foundation reports. Let’s get real: If we can’t win by standing for the constitution, let’s just quit, surrender the country, and simply lie down and die. This is another example of the preternatural fear exhibited by Republican Congressional leadership over the prospects of a government shutdown. I don’t understand why, because this nation has survived many shutdowns, including at least three major ones during Reagan’s administration, and at least one during Clinton’s. Of course, it is the shutdown of 1995 that leadership fears, because in that instance, Bob Dole over in the Senate undercut Gingrich because Dole was seeking the Presidency in 1996. Now, the leadership is selling-out for Mitt Romney’s sake, but if this continues, we will have a repeat of the 2006 disaster.

Somebody should tell Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell that they don’t answer to Mitt Romney, but more, Mitt Romney should make a case on behalf of budgetary discipline, but just like last summer, Romney didn’t say a word about the deal-making over the Debt Ceiling until it was finished, only then remarking on it. This is precisely the sort of spineless approach I have feared from Mitt Romney, and from any Congress that would work with him. If this is what it will be like in a Romney administration, I’m not interested. More, we shouldn’t get our hopes up too high since it’s now apparent that Boehner and the boys in the House simply don’t have the stomach for a battle. As usual, the GOP establishment is in collusion with liberals to screw the rest of us for the sake of politics.

Here’s the list of problems Heritage offered with this latest continuing resolution(CR):

It stifles the economy by adding to the uncertainty among investors and employers, making them reluctant to pursue growth-producing, job-creating activities.

It erodes public confidence. Congress’s repeated failure with such routine matters as annual spending bills breeds cynicism about how lawmakers are handling more than $3.5 trillion of the economy’s resources each year.

It weakens Congress’s ability to budget at all. Each repetition makes fiscal mismanagement the norm. Past vices become present-day habits, and the chance of Congress restoring stable budgeting practices grows more remote. Without them, Congress will be unable to address the huge entitlement spending challenges that are growing larger and more imminent.

It risks an economic breakdown sooner than expected. Former Senator Judd Gregg (R–NH) has warned that “once reality sets in that there is going to be no improvement in leadership, whether on the fiscal cliff or on long-term deficits and debt, people and markets will react. They will not wait until January. Historically, September has been a good time for such a reaction.”

More than any of this, however, I believe it simply “kicks the can down the road” again, in search of a more favorable time to address the impending catastrophe. By “more favorable,” they mean a time when there is no impending election, but I have news for these establishment weasels: There’s always an election pending, and this is precisely why we never actually address these issues. Kicking the can down the road is much less painful to politicians, but it does precisely nothing to repair our nation, and it helps to promote an eventual collapse of our system.

Congressional Republicans ought to wake the Hell up. Mitt Romney’s campaign didn’t appoint them to office. We elected them. They’re in office to represent our interests, but not Mitt Romney’s electoral aspirations. This is not a winning strategy, but merely a plan for perpetual retreat. We can’t afford this sort of leadership any longer, and if this is what Romney offers, we’re better off without him too.

In the immortal words of officer John McClane, played by Bruce Willis in Die Hard, all I can say to Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke is “Welcome to the party, Pal.” Bernanke is now warning legislators about the fiscal cliff over which Washington is shoving the United States. I must say that I have a few problems with this primarily because Bernanke has been leading us over a monetary cliff all his own. At the same time, I have a few other pointed question for Chairman Ben as he chides Congress on its lack of budgetary restraint. Why, at this late date, when we’ve all known this has been coming, is it only now that the Federal Reserve Chairman feels the need to show concern?

He certainly didn’t say any of this, or not loudly, when Nancy Pelosi was running the House. I also notice that he didn’t chide the President, who hasn’t taken any substantive steps to curtail the problem, and could be said to have arguably multiplied them with his stimulus bill(a.k.a. Porkulus) that unlike previous stimulus programs, wasn’t a single budget year project, but has been copied in each successive year. Bernanke can complain to Congress all he wants, but when this whole mess got started, he was nowhere in sight. For the first three years of Obama’s administration, he said nothing much to the executive branch on the matter, at least not publicly, and he said nothing of the sort to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid when they controlled Congress in one-party dictatorial fashion.

Worse than that, however, he has administered the greatest printing of money in Federal Reserve history, and it has all been largely inflationary as I have reported. Mr. “Fiscal Cliff” should have thought about all of this as he was digitizing more currency into existence, through QE1 and QE2, and more recently, a quiet QE3(by another name.) All of this quantitative easing really amounts to is printing more money, (or digitizing it.) That policy leads to the same cliff, because it is by his printing of it that it exists for the government to borrow and spend in the first place.

For Bernanke to come along now, conveniently after the House is in Republican control and to then waggle his finger is a bit of a sideshow act. Some will take him seriously, and the markets may react badly, but the truth is that he has been leading us into an even greater danger, and I think he knows it. This may be his way of making a preemptive strike for later this year, if the dollar crashes. He can point at Congress and claim: “See, I told you so.” The problem is that if tries that, I will be right here waggling a finger at him, to assure him that others, like Sarah Palin, have told him so. I have made this clear repeatedly, and yet Bernanke now comes along to warn Congress? Congress? He had better heed some warnings over at the Federal Reserve himself.

Don’t get me wrong: Congress is being as irresponsible as ever, but some in the majority party are at least trying to do something about it. For Ben Bernanke to come along and say this now suggests that he’s either seeking political favor with President Obama, who re-nominated him for his current second term, that ends in Janurary 2014, or he’s setting us up because he knows something bad is coming, and he now wants to disassociate himself from any blame. It may well be both. The sharp fall in gold prices on Wednesday may signal the beginning of a deflationary cycle. That could lead to a complete economic collapse, and Bernanke’s actions over the past four years have done nothing to remove the possibility. He can point a finger at Congress if he likes, but that means there are at least three pointing back at him.

Barack Obama’s Office of Management and Budget Director Jeffrey Zients testified before Congress on Barack Obama’s proposed budget. House Republicans spent a good deal of time and effort trying to get a straight answer on when our budget would balance by grilling Zients on Wednesday. Unfortunately, Zients is another Obama liar. He has no intention of telling you when, under Barack Obama’s budget proposals, the budget would balance, because under Obama’s ludicrous budget offering, it never does. Let me say this again. Under Barack Obama’s budget proposals, they merely slow down the rate at which debt is accumulating, in theory, but in practice, it will not slow down since they are assuming rosy interest rates on new and existing debt, and his administration is rigging the numbers.

Here are two videos of Congressmen trying to get a straight answer from this newly-appointed Presidential Budget Liar, who will not admit on camera that the budget will never balance under these proposals. Never.

You can take what you want from all of this, but what is clear is that Obama is not interested in upholding his oath, but instead merely running our nation into the ground in opposition to his oath.

Barack Obama’s defense policies appear to be the most foolish, irresponsible, and negligent in modern American history. This president is cutting our defenses to the bone, and he knows it. Not satisfied with wreaking havoc with our conventional forces, he’s now examining the elimination of our strategic nuclear arsenal to as few as three hundred warheads. That’s fewer than China, and many fewer than Russia. If the United States gives up this deterrence to attack, we are effectively naked to such designs as other nations may have on our country. Three hundred nuclear warheads? While it sounds like tremendous destructive capacity, and it is, it does not offer the sort of strategic deterrent that our current nuclear arsenal comprises, and against a nuclear giant like Russia, it’s wholly insufficient to prohibit them from nuclear blackmail or outright nuclear attack if the relationship with them sours further. This policy proposal is a national suicide pact, and Barack Obama knows it. Let it be stated forthrightly: He is destroying the United States.

We are already at our lowest levels in decades, and the problem is that while most of us think of nuclear weapons and warfare in a global apocalyptic vision, the facts are much different. A nuclear warhead in the range of one megaton is a terribly destructive device, but it is enough to wipe out one large city. Across the vastness of the Russia, or China, it is a small impact. More, since priority targets are generally opposing nuclear weapons sites, it is impossible to cover all targets even at our current level if it came to that. I am not here making light of nuclear weaponry, except to say that such diminished levels as three hundred warheads means we would then have a force insufficient to deter a nuclear-armed Iran, if they can be deterred at all. From the article linked above:

John Bolton, former U.N. ambassador and undersecretary of state for international security during the George W. Bush administration, said in an interview that the administration’s plan to cut nuclear force to as low as 300 “alone is sufficient to vote against Obama in November.”

“Congress should urgently adopt a resolution rejecting the idea that any of these levels is consistent with American national security,” Bolton said. “Let’s just see who is prepared to support Obama.”

This is only the start. Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney went even further:

“Going down to 1000 to 1,100 is risky enough and frankly in today’s world, very risky. The purpose of our nuclear force structure is to deter any adversary from even thinking that they could minimize our attack options. Such thinking is very dangerous and will only encourage our adversaries to make bold decisions.”

This is an intentional attack on our strategic defense infrastructure, and President Obama must be held accountable even for suggesting it. I am much beyond the polite discussions of policy in bureaucratic terminology here. These cuts are a disaster that may ultimately cost millions upon millions of Americans their lives, never mind the future of the Republic itself, as a viable political body. The fox is in the hen-house, and many Americans still see him as an off-kilter hen. Let us not pretend that Barack Obama is here exercising the best interests of the United States, or the oath of his office to defend and protect the constitution. Recent actions by this president demonstrate he has no love of our constitutional system, and this is an egregious abandonment of his duties as commander in chief. Also from the article:

Kenneth deGraffenreid, a former Reagan administration National Security Council official, said in an interview that the plans for sharp nuclear cuts are “part of the administration’s purposeful decline of American military power.”(emphasis added)

Some people wonder why I become frustrated as they watch their football games, or their reality TV shows, but otherwise check out on the whole question of our nation’s affairs. Ladies and gentlemen, this cannot be permitted, and John Boehner had better get off of his whining duff, and step up to the plate. Mitch McConnell had better be all over the TV, and he’d better stop using weasel-words, if he remembers how to speak plainly any longer, because our nation is under attack from within. It’s time we stop mincing words to disguise this fact from our people and from ourselves. President Obama is no friend to this country, never mind its allies, and this strategic proposal for what is essentially unilateral nuclear disarmament makes of our nation a sitting duck. This is not simple incompetence. This is not mistaken thinking. This is not a case of good intentions leading to unintended consequences. This is a monstrous betrayal of the American people by a leftist ideologue who hates the country he is sworn to lead, defend, and protect.

What a bunch of liars! Everybody with the discerning capacity of a gnat knew that the Debt Deal was a loser, and that the triggers and targets and sequestrations would all result in only one thing: Massive defense cuts while the Obama spending machine chugs along. Now that it has come to pass, some House Republicans are now expressing “buyers’ remorse.” My suggestion to these simpering would-be Republican leaders is that if they think they now feel badly about the way this has turned out, just imagine their poor voters. These members of Congress who were elected precisely to stand firm on this issue should understand something more: If they think they’re feeling buyers’ remorse, they should see how their voters feel about having elected them. They feel badly? Not badly enough!

This foolishness is their way of trying to repair bridges to voters, particularly the Tea Party, but I think it’s pathetic and will not work. I think the voters who elected these members, all of them, should remember that these are the people who sold us out to Barack Obama on the basis that they needed to do so in order to save their own electoral skin. As I discussed at the time of the “deal,” the entire episode was a display of sickening surrender by House Republicans, whipped into submission by a weak Republican leadership that is more willing to discipline its own members than to fight the leftist front.

Cowardice was the approach of the time, and it was all about their unwillingness to do the hard work of leadership. It is this same troop of alleged “stalwarts” who shafted Newt Gingrich in 1995 over the government shutdown, as they went with Dole rather than Gingrich. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, that is who the whiners in our House leadership is comprised of today. Nobody on the conservative side of this argument should forget that these folks had a chance to stand up to the Republican leadership, and to stand against Obama and the Senate, in order to stave off this growing disaster.

Our military is now bearing the vast majority of the cuts under the auspices of this programmed sequestration and now we see Congressmen from defense-heavy districts complaining, after having voted for this pig in a poke. They took what they thought was the easy way out politically, to try to safeguard their own necks, all because they were unwilling to fight. To suggest that we need new leadership in the House of Representatives is to undersell the point: We need new leadership everywhere among the Republicans, in the House, the Senate, and in committees.

Consider the case of Buck McKeon(R-CA), Chairman of the Armed Services Committee. He backed the deal, and helped round up the freshmen members, and pushed them to support this plan, yet now he complains bitterly that the deal is no damned good. Interviewed for The Hill article, he said:

“I voted for it because I was told the supercommittee couldn’t fail, because sequestration was so bad that they would have to come together on that,” McKeon said. “Well, obviously it didn’t work, so now we find ourselves in a very difficult situation.

“Can I go back knowing what I know now, and change my vote then? We don’t get that luxury around here.”

This is the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee complaining that if he knew then what he knows now, he’d have changed his vote. If Buck McKeon were in easy shouting distance of me, I’d point out to this bonehead that THE ENTIRE CONSERVATIVE BASE OF THE PARTY KNEW, and was telling he and the Speaker, and the Majority leader all of this in no uncertain terms. What sort of dismally bankrupt logic permits this man to now pretend that he didn’t know. He’s lying! He did know! They ALL knew! The rare few members whose arms they could not twist certainly knew. The members who they cajoled and prodded into joining them in surrender knew.

What then is this business about not knowing then what he knows now? Somebody who lives in Chairman McKeon’s district should please let him know I’m calling him out on all of this. I may be nobody, but even this nobody knew! Obviously, the Tea Party in his home district must be making a fuss, otherwise this useless whiner wouldn’t be out in the media whining about not having known how this would go. How can any serious leader in the GOP claim not to have known? The answer is that there are not now many serious leaders in the GOP in the House, so if the truth would be told, every last one of them who has been there over three terms should be bounced out of town on their asses at the next possible electoral opportunity.

Forgive me please, ladies and gentlemen, for becoming a bit hacked-off about all of this. It’s unconscionable that the leadership of the Republican party in the House of Representatives would tell us with a straight face, and plenty of simpering, that they hadn’t known. Boehner needs to go. Cantor needs to go. McKeon and every other one like him needs to go. I think we should question the sincerity of any member of the House, never mind the leadership, who claims that he or she hadn’t known. In fact, I’m certain of it. We told them. We demanded Cut, Cap and Balance, and while it passed the House, it was already being undercut by the Speaker’s own negotiations. No sir, they all knew. All of them.

Politico is reporting that Senator Rand Paul(R-KY) has returned one-half million dollars to the treasury unspent. This was roughly 16% of the allocated operating budget for his Senate offices, and it represents an unusual act in terms of ordinary government practice. In most government operations, every last dime is spent, right down to the penny, in order to justify a demand for even more in the budgeting process for subsequent years. The freshman Senator from Kentucky, and son of Texas Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul said the following at a news conference in Louisville, presenting a symbolic check to the tax-payers:

“I ran to stop the reckless spending. And I ran to end the damaging process of elected officials acting as errand boys, competing to see who could bring back the biggest check and the most amount of pork.”

He continued:

“I hope this sets an example for the rest of government – at all levels,” he added. “We can carry out our duties in a fiscally responsible way. Government can be both smart and efficient. We are proving that – and trying to convince the rest of Washington.”

That’s fantastic. If we could only get the rest of Congress to match this, we could save something in the range of a quarter-billion dollars. Of course, I won’t be holding my breath and neither should you. There is talk of Paul possibly seeking the presidency in 2016, but that’s been speculation. In any event, it is nice to see at least one Senator is living up to his promises to cut federal spending, and while the amount is trivial in the context of a $1.5 trillion federal deficit, it’s also true that it’s another half million that our children won’t be forced to repay someday. Of course, this is a symbolic act in terms of the news conference, but I think it’s a positive development that for a change, a member of the Senate took the notion of making cuts even when it hits their own operations budget.

NewsMax.TV conducted an interview with Allen West(R-FL) in which West questions Mitt Romney’s credentials as a true conservative, and he points out several of Newt Gingrich’s best accomplishments, referring to Gingrich as “the smartest person” among those now in the contest. West wasn’t willing to endorse any candidate yet, but he sees the race coming down to Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Newt Gingrich. He also described at length why it remains important for the GOP to battle against Obama’s illegal “recess appointments” that weren’t, but he wouldn’t commit to the notion of impeachment. Representative West also pointed out the need to take great care in any cuts to our national defense.

While he said he likes Ron Paul’s views on economic liberty, he expressed serious concerns about Paul’s foreign policy positions. He went on to severely criticize Barack Obama’s lack of leadership, and he made several excellent observations about the reckless behavior of the Obama administration. West remains a very popular Congressman nationally. You can watch the entire video at NewsMax.

Just when you think the fools in Washington DC could scarcely do more damage to our country, they show up with the latest crisis and debacle to prove your theory wrong. This one has been coming since the day John Boehner and the boys cut the deal with Harry Reid and his henchmen. It’s been in the works since Barack Obama decided his best re-election strategy would be to run against a “do-nothing Congress.” (We should be so lucky.) The lines are drawn, and now the super-duper, mega-whopper debt committee is having trouble agreeing to the cuts that were promised when the deal was made back in August. Surprise, surprise! Gomer Pyle could have seen this coming, but clearly, John Boehner and Eric Cantor did not. This game stands to create financial havoc with another debt rating downgrade just in time for Thanksgiving, and just like the last round, it’s being engineered so that the Republicans either agree to a ridiculous deal, or have one thrust upon them via the “automatic triggers” built into the deal to which they agreed back in August. Either way you slice it, it’s a lose-lose for GOP, and as usual, conservatives will get the blame, and this is the reason why we cannot afford more establishment Republicans.

Consider the cuts in question. At present, the deal required that they cut $1.2 Trillion from the next ten years of federal spending. This means lopping off a mere 3.5-4.0% of the projected Federal spending over the period, but perhaps less, depending upon whose projections you believe. This is a small amount in that gargantuan sum of money, and yet what the Obama administration and the Democrats intend to do is to see most of it come from defense cuts. The salient point in this discussion is that none of the cuts under consideration even seriously begin to reduce the Federal expenditures now forecast in excess of revenues. Worse, Democrats are playing fast and loose with the terminology, counting tax hikes as “spending cuts.” More bizarre is the fact that Republicans are now largely accepting that characterization.

What this means to you and I is that by cutting the deal back in August, not only did Republicans get a black eye by getting the blame for the first downgrade, but all they have done is to postpone the bad news into the on-rushing Holiday season, when the bad news will multiply, and they’ll find themselves playing the scapegoats again, this time less than twelve months before the next elections.

Back in July, I warned you about this deal, and that in fact, more had been said than done. As it turns out, virtually everything I expected would happen has now happened. The Balanced Budget Amendment went down to defeat in the House. The Republican leadership in the House has revealed that its bargaining position is awful, and it’s all because when they had the chance to make a stand back at the end of July, they failed. They played to political expedience, and short-run damage control, but now the bill has come due, and it’s going to be paid at our expense, and at the expense of the defense of our nation.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’ll tell you what I believe: Until we clean up the Republican party and the insiders, the deal-makers, and the surrender-monkeys, we’re not going to make much progress. Each and every time one of these people who promises to stand tough ultimately folds, we need to send them home. No “ifs, ands, or buts.” Our country can’t afford any more of this brand of tepid leadership. No more pastels. We need bright, bold colors, and we need them fast. How do we expect to hold onto the House next fall, never mind capture the Senate or the White House, if our alleged leadership can be so easily talked into a suicide pact with the devil? It’s something we will all be forced to consider, as the Democrats force a crisis and at least one more time, Republicans will take the blame. Can you imagine the laughter over at the White House?

As you will may remember from the Debt Ceiling debacle in early August, the deal then worked out has some automatic triggers. If the Super Committee created by the legislation fails to produce sufficient spending cuts, those triggers will kick in and cuts will be forced upon Congress. The biggest target of these cuts is the defense budget, and as the New York Times is reporting, it’s Leon Panetta who is now considering what those cuts will be. This is one of the most despicable parts of our current budget morass, and it’s astonishing that nobody much seems to notice: One of the few legitimate functions of government is the national defense, and yet among all the things to be cut, defense will be hit the most deeply. I have no problem with an examination of the necessities of our defense spending, but I’m also aware that while government spends money on all sorts of things for which it has no actual constitutional authority, defense is clearly one of the budget categories for which the federal government exists. In part, this is the result of the can-kicking in which Boehner and House Republicans joined by making their deal with the devil in August, but it’s also the built-in result of generations of governmental growth in other areas of expenditure.

Defense spending now stands at approximately $700 billion. That’s an astonishing number that is as large as the entire federal budget just thirty years ago. Part of that number owes to our engagements in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the actual baseline spending for defense being $530 billion. That’s still an incredible amount of money, but it is only $130 billion(yes, “only”) more than the defense budget at the height of the Reagan administration, but in inflation-adjusted dollars, it’s actually less. Defense constitutes the largest single line-item in the discretionary portion of the budget, but the entitlements, in the non-discretionary budget, have begun to dwarf the spending on defense. Social Security is a larger program, and Medicare and Medicaid together exceed the total defense spending. It should seem odd to Americans that programs for which there is no clear constitutional authorization are considered “non-discretionary,” while programs that are most definitely among the legitimate roles of our federal government are considered “discretionary.”

What this means is that we don’t have a choice on a year-to-year basis about those items in the non-discretionary budget. We are going to spend to support them, because previous legislation has mandated it. Discretionary budget items are those that are adjusted on an annual basis, and not necessarily tied to previous legislation. You can look at it this way for simplicity’s sake: Non-discretionary spending is comprised of entitlement programs. Discretionary spending is comprised of everything else. In our federal budget, non-discretionary spending is roughly twice the size of discretionary spending.

I am certain defense can be trimmed without hampering the nation’s immediate defenses, but I am less certain that over the long run, we can maintain a force capable of deterring and repelling enemies around the globe. Even in the midst of a deep recession, we are having difficulties with recruiting and retention of military personnel. This is because just like any other large organization, most of the defense budget is actually spent on salaries and benefits for our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines. In precisely the same way that the CEO of a large corporation will make cuts to employees first, mainly because it’s the biggest single operational cost, the Defense Department suffers from the same basic problem: Service-members cost a great deal, and a good deal more than their already pathetic pay and benefits represent. Training costs are phenomenal, and the costs of supporting units in the field are huge.

Many will suggest, naively, that we simply “buy a few less $400 toilet seats.” While that makes for a good laugh line, the reality is that the defense budget has finally managed to clean up most of those sorts of egregious expenditures over the last decade or so, largely because the Defense Department has had no choice. Still, there are matters that should be examined, like the billions of dollars simply missing, and other problems with big-ticket line items. Nevertheless, in our dangerous world, there is an ever-escalating competition between us and our would-be and real enemies, where high technology will be contribute directly to reducing the number of flag-draped caskets that arrive at Andrews AFB during each future engagement. This sobering recognition is among the reasons that any such spending cuts in the military budget must be accomplished as some might say, “not with a machete, but with a scalpel.” We must be certain that whatever cuts we make do not leave us naked to attacks, and that when we do engage in warfare, our troops are given every advantage we can provide to win with minimal losses.

One of the areas in which Secretary Panetta is looking for cuts to defense is in the area of medical and other benefits, in addition to gross payroll. That’s a mistake. We already have difficulties attracting people to serve in the military, and this too can have a dramatic affect on morale, and readiness. In truth, to make the level of cuts they’re intending, nearly $200 billion annually, we’re going to be forced to withdraw from virtually all overseas engagements and forward locations. This poses another danger, inasmuch as we may be slower to respond to crises around the globe, and we may be less able to react when things go awry in one theater of operations or another. We can ill-afford to be caught short again, because the direction of global terrorism is marching toward weapons of mass destruction. The 9/11 attacks of 2001 were just a sample of the sort of mayhem the terrorists around the globe are going to be able to create, and this says nothing of our strategic adversaries such as Russia, China, and several others.

This impending doom for the DoD makes plain the problem with our current budgetary priorities. We are spending far too heavily on entitlement programs of every description, and it will no begin to affect our nation’s defenses. There are those who argue that the military should be cut, but they don’t think in terms of scalpels or even machetes, but guillotines. This short-sighted approach is surely destined to create a situation in which we will face increased vulnerabilities on some fronts, and escalating troubles with recruitment and retention. Our fighting forces deserve the best equipment and training we can afford, but now the question is: What can we afford? The answer to this question is likely to be unsatisfactory, because too many politicians derive too much support by virtue of entitlement spending, and while the argument could be made that there is a certain element of the same thing with the defense budget where it comes down to large bases and projects, it’s also true that they aren’t so concerned about the costs in morale and readiness for ordinary soldiers. What the American people must begin to recognize is that we’ve blown our budget not so much by virtue of military spending, but because we’ve over-extended our social spending to such a degree that it is now squeezing out defense. There’s something terribly wrong in our thinking when we look at military spending as “discretionary” but Medicaid as “non-discretionary.” What is our government here to do, after all? Now we’ve been reduced to the near inevitability that a big-government liberal, Leon Panetta, is going to be hacking away at our nation’s defenses. We should all be worried at this prospect.